Yasuko Yokoshi’s ‘Bell’ at New York Live Arts

Yasuko Yokoshi’s ‘Bell’ Kuniya Sawamura, center, performing in the world premiere at New York Live Arts on Saturday.

Andrea Mohin / The New York Times

By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

March 18, 2013

A Rudyard Kipling ballad starts with the refrain “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” In the choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi’s “Bell,” which had its world premiere on Saturday at New York Live Arts, East and West indeed don’t meet. But they share the stage; they overlap; they coincide. The result, unlike any production I have seen, runs a gamut: It’s peculiar, admirable, a bit long-winded and sometimes perplexing.

It shows how the 1863 Japanese Kabuki play “Kyoganoko Musume Dojoji” (“A Maiden and a Bell at the Dojyoji Temple”) has elements in common with the 1841 ballet “Giselle.” In each a heroine is driven mad by heartbreak; in each she reappears as a spirit.

In “Giselle” the ghostly heroine both forgives the contrite man who deceived her and, by dancing with him, saves him from death. In “Kyoganoko Musume Dojoji,” however, the male lover, Anchin, rejects the heroine Kiyo-hime because he is a priest. Enraged, she transforms herself into a great serpent; he hides within a bell in the Dojoji temple; she, coiling herself around the bell, scorches him to death with her fiery breath.

In that Kabuki play the serpent takes the guise of a “shirabyoshi” (female dancer in male costume) called Hanako, visiting the Dojoji temple and revealing herself to be a serpent as she climbs inside the bell. It takes prayers and heroism to drive her out. Only parts of this are clear in “Bell,” in which Ms. Yokoshi plays two stages of the shirabyoshi role. In a program note she remarks wryly of the story: “I have no idea what it means or why it’s this or why that way. Words are ambiguous, and dance is more ambiguous than words.”

“Bell” has 12 performers, Japanese and American: 6 dancers, one of whom joins the 6 other musicians. It certainly doesn’t tell the “Giselle” story by Western standards of theatrical narration; it leaves plenty of the Dojoji one untold. But it uses music both Western (several parts of “Giselle,” both taped — very loud — and with live viola, and a pop song too) and Kabuki. At first we’re told parts of the Dojoji story Western style, with speech, song or with barefoot ballet. Different idioms, Western and Japanese, alternate or coincide. Gradually, however, it draws us into the Kabuki way of storytelling, where plenty can be inferred, and where small strokes — the holding of a sleeve, the angle of a fan — may imply much.

Remarkably, its use of Kabuki music is where the work is at its finest. Four of the musicians are Japanese, seated on our right. The two Americans begin on our left, with the singer Gelsey Bell, her long hair flowing over her shoulders, standing in a gray gown whose length trails over steps. At one point she sings Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” In a long central section, however, she chants Japanese words in alternation with the male Japanese vocalist Sanshichiro Kineya. And finally she goes over to sit beside him, where she sings. Her crossing of musical cultures is among the production’s most absorbing features.

Mr. Kineya, a member of a celebrated musical family, is simply the most enthralling Kabuki vocalist I have ever heard, very finely shaping lines, using vibrato, sustained notes and different resonances with marvelous skill. Yoko Reikano Kimura, playing the shamisen (a three-stringed lute) and, later, singing, is also superb; Tadayuki Mochizuki and Kuniya Sawamura, playing percussion, are very fine.

Perhaps the hardest and surely the most original roles are those for the Western dancers Julie Alexander, Lindsay Clark, and Jennifer Laferty. Dancing barefoot ballet, they’re the residents of the temple who admit the shirabyoshi Hanako; in later stages they share and embody her heartbreak. They’re both chorus and refractions of the heroine. Though most of their individual dances outlive their welcome, each stage is remarkable; and these three do much to bring aspects of Western charm to the production.

It’s easy to be struck by how Hanako in one scene is played by both the male Kuniya Sawamura and the female Ms. Yokoshi joined together. When Mr. Sawamura later performs alone, his role — very muted in style but compelling — is among the most inscrutable parts of the production. Ms. Yokoshi is generally vivid though never spellbinding in two contrasted solos: one as shirabyoshi, one (with a white mane of hair) as serpent. The finest Kabuki dancing comes in a closing solo by Ms. Seyama. Though this is certainly ambiguous, it’s here we feel how the fan, the sleeve, the bend of the knees, the tilt of the torso, the measured pace of the feet are all elements of taut dramatic poetry.